Personal care compositions are well known and widely used. Desirable personal care composition must meet a number of criteria. For example, in order to be acceptable to consumers, a personal care composition must exhibit good cleaning properties, must exhibit good lathering characteristics, must be mild to the skin (not cause drying or irritation) and preferably should even provide a conditioning benefit to the skin. Some consumers choose a personal care composition for both the odor of the product itself, as well as, the residual odor the composition leaves on the skin or hair. Perfumes contain individual components called perfume raw materials or PRMs, which add to the perfume's scent. Certain PRMs are more volatile and provide a scent or “bloom” when the bottle is opened, or when used in the shower. Other PRMs tend to deposit on the skin and can last longer, providing a residual benefit, or perfume longevity. These PRMs are sometimes called ‘base notes’ of a fragrance.
However, some perfumes and perfume raw materials can affect other qualities of the composition, such as viscosity, lather and visual appearance. For example, the perfume and perfume raw materials can interact with surfactant micelles, increasing viscosity of the personal care composition and reducing the lather obtained from the personal care composition. As well, compositions that comprise surfactant also have limited ability to absorb perfume, and high levels of perfume can form a separate, turbid phase in an otherwise transparent composition making the composition visually unattractive to some consumers. Therefore, some personal care compositions and multiphase personal care compositions with perfumes often do not maintain their viscosity so as to provide consistent dispensing and not separate into bulk phases as the compositions age.
Accordingly, the need still remains for multiphase personal care compositions with perfumes which remain stable.